THE STORY – A Yemeni family are torn apart during a Mediterranean crossing, as a mother and father fight for survival and reunification amid a harsh migration system.
THE CAST – Rawa Mohammed Hazaea Ahmed Qasem, Hani Ghaleb Othman Al-Shehab & Nejma
THE TEAM – Sine Plambech (Director/Writer) & Janus Metz (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
Nestled among the dark, brooding waves of the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast, the tiny boats bob away. Onboard are migrants seeking a better life in Europe, making the tenuous journey north to try and land at an Italian port. Stranded in international waters, they are in a literal liminal space, between the hardships they’re leaving behind on one continent and the uncertain future they have ahead, should they make it to their destination. Sine Plambech’s sublime film “Rescue” dives deeply into the migrant crisis that has shaped the global conversation for decades. With European policies in place that pay the Libyan government to dissuade those embarking on this journey, it becomes a push-and-pull between NGOs like Doctors Without Borders and their giant support ship the Geo Barents, and the circling navy vessels of the North African country that take as many of these voyagers back as they can. The end result is family separation at sea, with some men boarding for their journey to claim asylum, and women and children forcibly separated into other ships that head back south to be imprisoned, blackmailed, and even sexually exploited by those being funded to stop the flow.
It’s through the eyes of one family’s experience that the circumstances of global impact takes on a deeply singular and personal focus in this documentary. Hani boards the MSF ship screaming about his lost wife and children, praying they shared a death rather than be separated. Inconsolable, the lack of information at first is the most harrowing, yet when he finally finds where his wife Rawa has been led, the news remains grim. Shaving his beard (“we look like terrorists”), he begins his own journey outside of Italy, cell phone footage recording his escaping from refugee camps in order to head to the relative sanctity of Germany and its liberal asylum laws. His wife, meanwhile, undergoes a far harsher reality, an unfortunately common proclivity in the region, where in private they are subject to sexual exploitation and assault.
It’s these myriad of contradictory and deeply traumatizing elements that shape the film in sometimes surprising ways. One mission of the Geo Barents sees them defying protocol in order to save screaming individuals (almost all men, mostly of military age) bobbing in the sea. Without the explicit agreement of the Libyans, the one extra mission – the third of three that hadn’t been granted permission – jeopardizes future missions and future cooperation. The challenge of saving people right in front of you in crisis versus sticking with the agreed-upon rules and potentially rescuing far more in the future within the existing framework is but one of the nauseating compromises that such life-and-death situations present, where the realities on the waves make the carefully
constrained policies seem that much more obscene.
The Danes have a long history of exemplary works of non-fiction that provide deep nuance and a cinematically rich mode of storytelling, and Plambech’s work is no exception. Her anthropological background gives the film its depth and breadth, refusing on all fronts to minimize the circumstances or whitewash the communities from which these individuals are escaping. There’s nothing simplistic about answering the larger questions about what one is to do about this massive crisis, but by centering on this one family, the film does wonders to provide the details and context of just what its like to take such desperate actions, thus creating the deepest of empathy for these people who seemingly have no other choice than to choose to ride those roiling waves.
“Rescue” is a deeply affecting look at social and political forces that are transforming entire regions, swaying political movements, and moving massive amounts of funds in order to reduce the chaotic flow of people from one continent to another. Yet by drilling down on the stories of the people on the ship making the most difficult of choices, or the family sneaking a phone in the diaper of a baby in order to maintain a line of communication, we get a glimpse of the finite individuals that make up the near infinite statistics, the actual people that are at the heart of this otherwise almost-impossible to comprehend crisis. This powerful film is an absolute master class in craft and focus, and easily one of the best of the year. Plambech, her crew, and her brave collaborators have crafted something with “Rescue” that asks more questions than it answers, but in doing so brings the intricacies of these individual stories to the world stage, forcing us to reflect on what otherwise seems merely a vague, impossible to comprehend situation, and demands that audiences reflect on their own system of beliefs, what they’d do, and how they’d want to be treated if they found themselves in need of rescue in their own lives.
